Showing papers on "Poverty published in 1968"

The Other America : Poverty in the United States

Abstract: In the fifty years since it was published, "The Other America "has been established as a seminal work of sociology. This anniversary edition includes Michael Harrington s essays on poverty in the 1970s and 80s as well as a new introduction by Harrington s biographer, Maurice Isserman. This illuminating, profoundly moving classic is still all too relevant for today s America. When Michael Harrington s masterpiece, "The Other America," was first published in 1962, it was hailed as an explosive work and became a galvanizing force for the war on poverty. Harrington shed light on the lives of the poor from farm to city and the social forces that relegated them to their difficult situations. He was determined to make poverty in the United States visible and his observations and analyses have had a profound effect on our country, radically changing how we view the poor and the policies we employ to help them."

The role of family planning in the reduction of poverty.

Abstract: The prevention of unwanted births would have a substantial economic impact on families living in poverty. Using conservative assumptions the costs of family-planning programs are estimated to average $300 to prevent every unwanted birth that would otherwise have occurred. Over the years however the avoidance of an unwanted child would save the family an average of $8000 in the costs of child care. It would also enable couples to add an average of $600 to their annual incomes over a four-year period by making it possible for some of the wives to work. When all of these savings and added earnings are discounted to the year in which the unwanted births were prevented the total economic benefits average $7800 for every $300 spent on family-planning services. The ratio of benefits to costs is 26 to 1. (authors)

Poverty in rural america

Abstract: Economic distress and poverty have a major impact on housing conditions for both communities and households alike. Rural households in poverty experience some of the worst housing conditions in our nation. While housing conditions have improved dramatically for rural residents over the past three decades, more than 3 percent of all rural households occupy a unit with moderate problems, including inadequate services (kitchen/plumbing) and crowding (2009 American Housing Survey).

Poverty, Alienation and Mass Media Use:

Abstract: Men is one of less use of news media by the Women 37 poor and the alienated and greater use 20-44 Years of Age of media for escape by the poor and the alienated. This tends to mean then 45 Years of Age and Over * p C.05, onbtaibd teat. XI calcutated 011 u n d & t d and ulbrmd ”8 that the poor and the alienated use the newspaper less and radio and television more than the average person. When hportant bulletin news breaks However, recent studies also indicate under conditions of structural cona strong relationship &tween alienation Straint On interpersonal relaying Of the and pverty.2 the question news, the two-step flow Of initid inforof whether both alienation and poverty mation is relatively Unimportant. Over d& media use or whether perhaps three quarters of the respondens aware one of the two variables is the critical of the Johnson announcement learned one, With the relation &tween the 0thit instantaneously Via the electronic meer variable and media use merely an dia, principally television. An addition&fact. a1 17% learned it later directly from A survey in Athens, Ohio provides the mass media; only 5% of the knowsome data on poverty, alienation and em heard it by word-of-mouth and media use. Athens, a city of 16,000, most of these heard it within an hour, is a small urban center with light inin their own homes and from a reladustry and a university = its wonofic tive or a neighbor. base. Employment opportunities are Otherwise, these data tend to S U P relatively high, and consequently the POrt the most regular Of Other poor of the community tend to be the news diffusion studies. Talking about poor, permanent members of the news, especially With work associthe poverty group. at% and Perhap relaying supplemenTwo sets of respondents were chosen, tarY information is associated with Sex one to represent the poverty group and and socioeconomic status. In conclusion, thk Study of an exi w i l h r wrand Dadd M. mite, A ~ , tmme case of structural constraint on mucation. ~conomic statur: actors in N C W ~

Fertility and poverty in the United States: some implications for family-planning programs evaluation and research.

Abstract: This survey of the literature finds that large family size is most likely to occur when family income is less than $2000 a year when the woman is not employed outside the home when the family lives in a rural area or has rural origins and when educational level of the wife is 8th grade or less. When urbanized low-income families are less likely to have unusually large families they are more likely to marry sooner and have their children closer together than are stable working-class and middle-income families. Since nonwhites are more likely to have lower incomes and educational levels and are also more likely to have rural backgrounds it is no surprise that nonwhites have larger families than whites. The illegitimacy rate has increased rapidly over the period 1940-1966 fueled by high unemployment rates especially among blacks welfare policies which discriminate against families in which a father is present and low contraceptive use among poor families. Studies done to date have been limited because they have concentrated on white middle-class married couples. Several of the studies were done before modern contraceptive methods were available and most of the classic surveys have been limited to 1 city or 1 geographic area. Future research should focus on the social psychological and economic factors that influence family planning especially among lower-income families which appeals can be used with such families and the effects of different types of delivery services. Administrative studies also need to be made. Future family planning efforts should also be directed toward males.

The Nature of Poverty

Abstract: This chapter discusses the nature of poverty in underdeveloped country. People are poor not just in the sense that they have no money in their pockets. They are poor because they do not have enough to eat because their health is bad through inadequate diet or inadequate shelter or sanitation. Consequently, their whole life is taken up with a struggle to gain from the land subsistence for themselves and their families. As their health is bad, they are not efficient as farmers and peasants and so their efforts to grow more food are unsuccessful. As they are hungry and ill and absorbed with the daily struggle for food, they cannot build schools or factories or hospitals.

Progress against Poverty: The Governmental Approach

Abstract: The concept of poverty has a strong aspect of relativity. What is considered poverty in the United States today-often accompanied by possession of a television set and an automobile -might quite honestly be regarded as luxury by an Indian peasant in Bihar watching his children slowly starve to death. And, conversely, the starvation poverty which continually threatens much of Asia and Africa might be totally beyond the comprehension of an American Negro living in the stifling welfare atmosphere of an urban ghetto. Leon Keyserling expressed the current thinking of a substantial number of economists when he argued against acceptance of a strictly relative concept of poverty.

Breaking the Poverty Cycle: an Investigation Into the Correlates of Propensity for Change Among the Rural Impoverished in the Mississippi Delta.

Abstract: The'“objective of this study was to delineate socio­ demographic characteristics of impoverished individuals in rural areas of the Mississippi Delta Region who are poten-' tially breakers of the so-called poverty cycle. The under­ lying premise of the investigation was that an expressed willingness on the part of impoverished individuals to take positive action to change their life condition implied a higher potential for upward social mobility than an unwill­ ingness to change. The broad theoretical perspective for the research was derived from social mobility theory— the specific perspective was from Robert K. Merton's approach to social structure and anomie and his typology of modes of individual adaptation. The following specific questions were investigated: 1. What are the socio-demographic characteristics of individuals with high versus low propensity for change? 2. Can the variables "social participation" and "fatalism" be considered as intervening in the initial stage of the social mobility process?

Educational Status Orientations of Mexican American and Anglo American Youth in Selected Low-Income Counties of Texas.

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the educational status orientations of Mexican American boys and girls living in low-income rural areas of Texas and to compare these results to those obtained from a similar sample of Anglo Anerican boys and girls. Two apparently contradictory theoretical propositions were examined: (1) Talcott Parsons' assertion that the Spanish-American subculture is characterized by the Particularistic-Ascriptive value pattern leads to the inference that Mexican American youth would have low-level educational status orientations; (2) on the other hand, Robert Merton's proposition that high goals are widely diffused among all segments of our society leads to the opposite inference Information on Mexican American respondents was obtained in 1967 from 290 male and 306 female high school sophomores attending school in four South Texas counties. Comparable data were obtained in 1966 from 143 male and 131 female Anglo sophomores in three East Central Texas counties. The general research objective was to determine the relationships between the two ethnic types by sex on several elements of educational status orientations. It was concluded from the findings that boys and girls from the two ethnic types maintained high-level educational goals: the vast majority of both ethnic types desired post high school education and

Trend of real income of the rural poor in East Pakistan, 1949-66: an indirect estimate

Abstract: Pakistan's gross national product has been rising over time. While GNP per capita remained practically unchanged during the 1950's, it increased appreciably in the 1960's. The trend of per capita income does not, however. indicate whether and to what extent economic development had 'trickle down' effects to improve the lot of the relatively poorer sections of society. Studies of intertemporal changes in inequality of income distributions and in levels of income (consumption) could show what changes actually took place in their absolute and relative income positions

Poverty, Prejudice, and the Public Library

Abstract: ET me begin by emphasizing four current trends that affect us all id and have a high degree of relevance for the work of public libraries. First, there is the factor of interlocking complexity. Just as we live in a culture that is polarized around the scientific revolution, so do we live in one that puts a premium on organization, on system, on co-operation between units having mutual or overlapping interests. It is a day of calculated interdependence, of involvement, of planned togetherness, whether we like it or not. Not enough librarians realize that they can no longer preside over institutions or agencies in splendid isolation. Librarianship has too often been, and still is, a many-splintered thing. We do not have enough librarians who are prepared by education, experience, or by inclination to cope with the often bewildering interlocking complexity of their environment. Traditional forms of institutional autonomy are being displaced by emerging patterns that emphasize interdependence rather than independence in the expansion and improvement of education and library work. But it is not only a problem of cooperation or sharing of responsibility between like institutions. In formal education, for instance, state education departments and local school officials must learn to establish constructive relationships with the federal government, with private and parochial institutions, with private and public agencies in such fields as health, welfare, housing, recreation, and comimuniity planniiag, with business and industry, labor, and with the other educational resources that have hitherto stood on the periphery of the formal teaching and learning process, such as museums, libraries, educational television, zoos, the performing arts, and so on. And, finally, in this day of interlocking complexity, when we seem to find only half-solutions to the problems of our own human aggregation, let us be firmly cormmitted to providing a lateral outreach to the poor and to the disadvantaged, to involving them in a shared responsibility for planning and implementing community action programs. Too long we have either ignored the poor or else have provided welfare services to the poor and the disadvantaged on the basis of superior-inferior authority relationships, divorced from the goal of developing human resources and the independence and autonomy of the individual human being. Means and ends have been confused. Let us listen for a moment to Professor Dan WV. Dodson of New York IUniversity, when he spoke at a conference we called on the role of public libraries in developing services for the disadvantaged:

Negro Children and Language Arts.

Abstract: "recent surveys have shown that about 60 per cent of our students are three years behind in reading and writing." This state ment was made by Richardson Dilworth (1968), President of the Philadelphia School Board in a speech in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 9, 1968. Over half of Philadelphia's school population is Negro, and many of its schools have less than 10 per cent non Negro enrollment. In these ghetto schools the reading scores are significantly lower than in the more racially balanced schools, or in the schools in the socioeconomically more fortunate neighbor hoods. Similar test scores can be reported for several other major urban centers, and?as in Philadelphia?there seems to be no question that the Negro child who attends a predominantly Negro school in a neighborhood with a low socioeconomic level is not learning to read as well as he should be. This situation is especially serious in view of the inter-locking triangle of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment. From the family which lives in poverty seems to come a disproportionate number of school drop-outs, functional illiterates, and "unteachables." Such pupils enter the job market as unskilled laborers, and in many cases are actually unemployable. As unemployed adults, they swell the welfare roles, or go into crime, increasing the poverty and the unrest of urban centers. The self-perpetuating nature of this triangle is its especial tragedy. Fortunately, the nation as a whole is at last making concrete (though not always effective!) efforts to resolve the total problem. There are attempts to upgrade urban schools; to find new ways to train the untrained so they can become employable; to attack the roots of poverty itself. Integral to all of these is the teaching of reading. Without the ability to read, economic progress is not an open choice for anyone. Recognizing the fact that the racially unbalanced, ghetto schools in poverty areas are not doing the job of teaching reading despite?in many cases?dedicated staffs and heroic efforts, a